"The Associated Press archive of historic images is the largest and most comprehensive of Twentieth Century news and historical photography, composed of millions of negatives and prints."
On an early morning in May 1848, 10 men representing six New York City newspapers sat around an office table of the New York Sun. They had been in session for more than an hour and all that time they had been in stubborn argument.
At issue was the costly collection of news by telegraphy. The newly invented telegraph made transmission of news possible by wire but at costs so high that the resources of any single paper would be strained.
David Hale of the Journal of Commerce argued that only a joint effort between New York's papers could make telegraphy affordable and effectively prevent telegraph companies from interfering in the newsgathering process. To get news from the west and from abroad, Hale argued, newspapers had to work together if the public was to be served with increasingly wider coverage of the United States and the world.
Although reluctant at first, the six highly competitive papers agreed to the historic plan, and The Associated Press was born. The Associated Press assumed its modern legal form in 1900 when AP incorporated as a not-for-profit cooperative under the Membership Corporation Law of New York State. An historic 1943 legal decision opened AP membership to all qualified U.S. newspapers.
Headquartered in New York, The Associated Press is the world's oldest and largest news gathering organization, providing coverage of news, sports, business, weather, entertainment, political news and technology news in text, audio, video, graphics, photos and newsroom technology to more than 15,000 news outlets worldwide with a daily reach of one billion people around the world. Its multimedia services are distributed by satellite and the Internet to more than 120 nations. The Associated Press photo archive is the largest and most comprehensive of 20th century news and historical photography, composed of millions of negatives and prints and 800,000 images online.
The Associated Press photographs are represented in the Rocky Mountain Region by GALLERY M. 
Reference: The Associated Press Inc.
